The Farcical Goings-On at the BC Human Rights Tribunal
Bev Jackson May 1, 2026
Barry Neufeld is 78 years old and he is an obstinate old man. Since I’m only a few years younger and an obstinate old woman, we get on very well. Big difference is that Barry Neufeld lives and speaks his mind — without any concession to the prevailing ethos — in the Canadian province of British Columbia, one of the most gender-captured places in the world.
He posted some comments back in 2017 that – while they are now mainstream in the UK and even regularly expressed in Canada — made him the immediate target of an extraordinary legal case, leading to years of vilification – a relentless campaign of persecution that has recently become so extreme that Barry is acquiring hero status and galvanizing opposition to gender craziness in his province.
Barry Neufeld’s long career gave him first-hand experience of what can go wrong between adults and children. He has a thirst for knowledge — his academic qualifications include a bachelor’s degree in adolescent psychology – but he is no ivory tower scholar. He is a man who has confronted some of the most difficult and unpleasant problems in society and has helped as best he could. In his long career as a probation officer, he had frequent dealings with sex offenders and became extremely familiar with the strategies they employ to get to their victims. He also spent many years serving on multidisciplinary teams with the Ministry of Children and Families, supporting vulnerable and underprivileged children. His own experience as a foster child heightened his empathy for these children. He has a very keen awareness of their susceptibility to persuasive influence: “I met numerous kids who were confused about their identities,” he recalls. By 2017, Barry had also spent over two decades serving as a school board trustee – more precisely, as a trustee of Chilliwack Board of Education. When he saw something wrong, he felt a special responsibility to sound the alarm.
Legal context
Bill C-16 (passed in 2017) amended the Canadian Human Rights Act to add “gender identity or expression” as a prohibited ground of discrimination. Soon afterwards, SOGI 123 (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) was published and disseminated, providing tools for schools to help them ensure compliance. Schools started using SOGI 123 to train teachers and students — from kindergarten through grade 12
What did Barry see in the SOGI 123 resource that made him so angry?
The front page of the SOGI123 resource reads: “Everyone has a sexual orientation and gender identity.” [1] Beneath that uncompromising assertion, it states: “SOGI 123 helps educators make schools safer and more inclusive for students of all sexual orientations and gender identities (SOGI).”
Barry objected strongly to this “educational initiative.” Besides rejecting the whole premise of SOGI 123, seeing it as particularly inappropriate to teach young children about “gender identity,” he was incredulous to find that children were being taught that some people were born in the wrong body and might be the opposite sex. Of course, this is not always expressed in those precise words: the message is often conveyed through cute storybooks in which a boy teddy bear confesses he has always felt like a girl inside, or in which a red crayon in a blue wrapper represents a sense of alienation – the feeling that is known as “gender dysphoria.” Instead of teaching kids that it is fine to be a girl who likes trucks or a boy who likes barbies, SOGI 123 was teaching reactionary stereotypes – known perversely by its supporters as “inclusive values.”
Barry has an inquisitive mind. When he comes across something he finds weird, his natural inclination is to study it. So he did some research and discovered that the SOGI 123 approach encouraged “social transition,” in which a child who feels uneasy about his or her sexed body asks to be referred to by an opposite-sex name and pronouns. He studied some more. He was horrified to learn that social “transition” often leads a child to experience growing discomfort as puberty approaches, such that he – or more frequently these days she – will clamor for puberty-blocking drugs to prevent the changes that would clash with their current appearance and self-image. Worse still, he learned that almost all children who take puberty blockers go on to take cross-sex hormones, with devastating lifelong effects on their mental and physical health.
In his years as a probation officer, Barry had encountered men, and situations, that would give nightmares to the complacent teachers of SOGI 123, who think “inclusion” and embracing multiple “gender identities” are all sweetness and light. He had seen how adept sexual predators are at seeking out a child who is teased, bullied, or ostracized and making them feel “special.” In his experience, abusers would often insert themselves into an unhappy family and pretend to bring happiness and harmony. They were mostly trusted figures like stepfathers, uncles, scout leaders, Sunday school teachers, clergy or sports coaches. Several sexual predators told him it was much easier to seduce young children these days because of all the sex-positive learning resources and explicit books in school libraries – which had desensitized them. And in his work with the Ministry of Families, he had also gained expert knowledge of the other side of the equation – he grew to recognize the insecure children who could easily become a predator’s prey. He knew that prompting a child to question facts and certainties, especially about his or her sex, could inadvertently create a vulnerability that could in time help a predator gain the child’s confidence.
Once he had studied everything he could find on the topic, he did not hesitate. Barry is known for many things — even tact and diplomacy where these are called for. He did not think tact or diplomacy were called for here. He exploded. In October 2017, he took to Facebook, where he wrote boldly that “allowing little children to choose to change gender is nothing short of child abuse.” He took aim not just at SOGI 123 itself but at all those teaching it, saying that their actions were – however unintentionally — grooming children for exploitation by predators. Then, all hell broke loose.
Shared from https://bevjacksonauth.substack.com/p/barry-neufeld-eight-years-of-legal
Barry's fighting back for truth with a judicial review
support his defence, here are the many official ways you can donate
Rights And Freedoms Fundraising Society - Barry Neufeld's Lawfare.
https://rightsandfreedoms.org/support-barry-neufeld
(Credit cards & etransfer available / Volunteer & 100% goes to Barry.)
Put a cheque in the mail
Attn: Barry Neufeld c/o Rights and Freedoms Fundraising Society
P.O. Box 21004, Chilliwack, BC V2P 8A9
(Write "For Barry" on the bottom of the cheque.)
Etransfer donatebarryneufeld@rightsandfreedoms.org
Official Give Send Go
https://www.givesendgo.com/BarryNeufeld
(GSG withholds a small percentage as their fee for hosting the site.)
Time Elapsed Since Barry Neufeld Charged With Hate Crime:
8 years, 3 months, 6 days (3017 days)
More about Bev Jackson
Lifelong progressive. Teacher, lecturer, translator, writer. Founding member of UK Gay Liberation Front 1970. Volunteered with refugees on Lesvos 2015; wrote about it in A Month With Starfish 2016. Co-founder of LGB Alliance 2019.